1. Technical Field
The subject matter discussed herein relates generally to automatic fading of user attribution to online content in a social network and, more particularly, to automatic fading of online user content.
2. Background Information
An online user may post content such as a recommendation, a tag, a comment, a post, a video, an image, or data associated with an application (e.g., a high score for an online game application). This posted content of the user may be made available to others. For example, the posted content of the user may be made available to the online public, to all online users, or to a subset of commonly associated users (e.g., a circle of family members or friends).
After posting the content, the online user may determine that he or she does not want to be attributed to previously posted content. For example, the online user may not want the publicity or personalization associated with the posted online content.
The reasons for such a determination by the user may be associated with personal life events, such as graduating from school and interviewing for a job, but not wanting previous posts that may be critical of a potential employer to be attributed to the online user. As another example, a user may no longer wish to maintain attribution due to a time limitation on the usefulness of the comments (e.g., comments on a television show set to fade at the end of a season, comments on a sports team set to fade at the start of a new season, comments associated with an event (e.g., holiday party) set to fade after a few weeks or months, comments on school friends fade at some point after graduation)
On the other hand, the user may not want to disrupt the viewing of the content itself, but may only want to remove attribution. The online user can only manually delete the content. However, the online user cannot schedule a future removal of attribution, or remove attribution in a graduated or delayed manner.
Therefore, a solution is required without the foregoing limitations.